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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Psychiatric illness in relation to frailty in community-dwelling elderly people without dementia
— a report from the Canadian Study of Health and Aging | | Author(s) | Melissa K Andrew, Kenneth Rockwood |
| Journal title | Canadian Journal on Aging, vol 26, no 1, Spring 2007 |
| Pages | pp 33-38 |
| Source | http://www.utpjournals.com |
| Keywords | Cognitive impairment ; Ill health ; Living in the community ; Correlation ; Canada. |
| Annotation | In this article, frailty is defined as the accumulation of multiple, interacting illnesses, impairments and disabilities. 5676 community dwellers without dementia were identified within the Canadian Study of Health and Aging, and self-reported psychiatric illness was compared by levels of frailty (defined as an index of deficits that excluded mental illnesses). People with psychiatric illnesses (12.6% of those surveyed, who chiefly reported depression) had a higher mean frailty index value than those who did not. Older age was not associated with psychiatric illness, for each additional deficit-defining frailty, odds of psychiatric illness increased. Similarly, psychiatric illness was associated with much higher odds of being among the most frail. These findings lend support to a multidimensional conceptualisation of frailty. The data also suggest that health care professionals who work with older people with psychiatric illness should expect frailty to be common, and that those working with frail older people should consider the possible co-existence of depression and psychiatric illness. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-070516214 A |
| Classmark | E4: CH: K4: 49: 7S |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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